It’s an obvious, lazy pun I know – but I'm feeling lazy and obvious today...
The list of ways the CONservatives have conned Britain is extensive, comprehensive, exhausting.
British politics has in many ways, been an open, ongoing
scam since Thatcher.
The horrors or WWII and the attendant shame rightly felt by the British establishment when troops from Blighty were measured against allied troops (literally) and found wanting in so very many ways (fitness, literacy etc), fed into the narrative that altered attitudes to societal and wealth inequalities and in a very tight nutshell – because this isn’t really the main thrust of this piece – helped usher in The Welfare State hot on the heels of slogans like Homes fit for Heroes.
The NHS was set up, slums were cleared, education was meant to open up and Britons were to be cared for from cradle to grave – a phrase were all familiar with.
Except – Thatcher herself – who Ken Clarke once
pointed out, had chosen NOT to put her career on hold and serve her country
during the war as others had – held ordinary working people in utter
contempt. Like the Tories of today, she did not come at this head on but
sideways. Pretending to be pro ordinary people, she systematically began disembowelling
working-class structures and working class organisations and benefits. She was ‘Thatcher
Thatcher (free school milk) milk snatcher’ to us back then but also the one who
meted out the punishment beating to The Miners (see couple posts ago - blog 493).
Plus of course it was Thatcher who began the horror
show of privatisation which culminated in the sell-off of The Post Office this
century and we all know what a shit show that has been. Easy on the ear and
deceptive phrases such as ‘right to buy’ helped shape the turd that stinks from
every corner of Britain today. In some cases it's the literal stench of
private profit-before-people whether its shit in the water or a shitty train
service – one which was the envy of the world.
Here is a list of just some of the cons perpetrated
by The Conservative Party since Thatcher began deconstructing post-war Britain.
The selling off of council house stock with no plan
to replace a vital national resource which helps to fuel today’s housing
crisis.
The council tax – still regarded as one of the most
unfair taxes ever imposed since the original Poll Tax which is what we used to
call it.
The Falklands nonsense –the war that spectacularly
turned around Thatcher’s deep unpopularity giving Britain even more years of hell.
Austerity – all of it - including the whole idea of those at
the bottom of the pile being THE PROBLEM.
The most recent con of course is Brexit. And it’s
ironic that while many in the Tory party idolise Thatcher – she was not anti-EU
but then neither was Boris Johnson until he realised that was how to get
himself more media adulation. Those who were paying attention alluded to turkeys
voting for Christmas but this is something CONservatives have always been able
to pull off – getting ordinary folk to vote against their best interests. Just break
out the jingoism.
Sadly – since the inclusion of Blair into the Labour
party machine – they also have done similar. Need I mention Iraq – illegal
invasion of – the ramifications are with us to this day. The private sector’s involvement in and abuse of
both NHS infrastructure and schools lies at the door of Blair's New Labour as
does the misery and life-blighting debt of University tuition fees for many thousands of young folk. But then Blair
was very much child-of-Thatcher.
While many are talking of Labour being a shoe-in for
the coming election – scepticism surrounding politics has grown in a way that makes
prediction more of a fool’s game even than when the last proper election was
called (I am not referring to Johnson’s get-Brexit-done CON v Corbyn’s hopeless twonk event in 2019)
So my question is – this time around – whenever it
is – having been conned so very obviously so very many times so comprehensively
– WILL THE BRITISH PUBLIC WISE UP?
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